Dougthebear, the football teams never put it out there that they are charitable organisations and thus are not considered as such.

I never said the churches didn't give plenty to the poor, just that they would be better doing more for the charitable side of their business than futile advertising and building huge, expensive monuments for their Gods such as churches and cathedrals.

The Catholic church is known for it's great personal wealth and properties, although it has been depleted somewhat lately trying to financially appease all those people physically and sexually abused in church run institutions by priests and others in the past.

It is amazing that the god deniers want to tell the churches how to spend their money. No doubt they are happy for the pagans to spend millions on keeping the gw fantasy afloat.

Suzionline boasts about her previous exploits on another post and now writes:

'I'll take my chances of there ever being such a thing as judgement day, and just try to be a good person without religious advertising to sway my views.'

I suggest your chance god is not a very reliable god to turn to. I also suggest that you are not nearly as good as you think you are. Somehow I suspect you are measuring yourself by the wrong standards. No wonder you don't think you need mercy. Hopefully you will wake up to the truth before its to late.

What a lot of vitriol runner.

Suzeonline did not boast about her exploits on another post - she very clearly explained in a later post what she meant and you are choosing to be rude and insulting completely ignoring her meaning and intent.

If your behaviour is the product of religion I will stick to the fairies at the bottom of the garden as being just as reliable.

With hateful Christian idiots like runner around, it's quite understandable that the churches want to embark on a campaign of positive propaganda. Good luck to them - they have every right to do so.

The only thing about this issue that I object to is that they are likely to be able to claim such advertising expenses as a tax offset against their commercial enterprises, since the advancement of religion is apparently classed as charity by the ATO - which means that all taxpayers are effectively subsidising their superstititous twaddle, like it or not.

CJ Morgan and others:

A factual clarification. Money spent by the churches on evangelism, specifically religious purposes, is not tax-deductible. Money spent on community aid is.

For example, the Salvation Army has an annual Red Shield Appeal, which is aimed at community service and to which contributions by the public are tax-deductible.

The Salvation Army is not just a charity but also a denomination (a church). Its own members every year are invited to contribute to what is called the Self-Denial Appeal, which is aimed at overseas work. They are asked to nominate whether their contribution (all or a specified part) is to be for relief work (construction of schools, hospitals, water infrastructure and so on) or for evangelism. Evangelism contributions are clearly identified as non-tax-deductible while purely aid contributions are.

Actually I do agree with Suzeonline in one regard: churches do not need great and glorious buildings, as 'the church' consists of people, not of buildings. It does however need places to meet and worship. Buildings that currently exist can be utilised however, as not using them would be wastage.

Churches have never put themselves out there as charitable organisations. Their primary purpose to is spread the gospel. As a by-product of this charity occurs.

When it comes to members of various churches that have committed sins and crimes against those in their care I would say that I am part of a vast majority that condemns these people and want to see them punished, and systems set up so that these sins and crimes may not happen again.

Getting back to the central topic, evangelism: The AFL and NRL have, amongst their mission statements, the spread of the particular football code that they manage. Funds received from gate takings, sponsorship and TV rights go towards this 'evangelistic' work. Do people criticise this in terms of how they can spend monies received?

Instead the churches are criticised for the spending of the funds available to them on their form of evangelism. Critics would prefer to see all income of the church spent on charitable works - fair enough. But what happend to those works when all the current members have died and have not been replaced? Will the humanists take up the slack?